HEXBUGS, especially the Nano, are a big hit with the elementary aged set and we have to admit we enjoy watching them scurry across our desks. While it is not easy to replicate them exactly, we've seen quite a few projects that come close to capturing all that is whimsical and delightful about the little vibrating robots.

The key to these basic little robots is vibration and there are multiple ways to obtain the source of the vibration including using a pager motor or the vibrating mechanism from an old mobile handset.

One of the easiest ways to create your own similar to HEXBUG Nano robots is to use the BrushBot kit from Make. This kit contains everything that you need to create 4 little robots. The included instructions are very simple and it's a project that is easy to do with children as there is no soldering involved. ($15)

If you prefer to put more DIY elbow grease in your robot project, here are four other sets of instructions courtesy of the creators at Instructables:

The key with these projects is in having a brush to use as a base, a vibrating motor, and a battery. Those three ingredients are common to all of the DIY vibrating robot projects that we've seen and luckily they are all rather inexpensive. We think building these robots is a great project to do with kids and we can see it being a hit at birthday parties. After all, who doesn't want to create their own robot party favours?